


could twist the sinews of thy heart?

by madsthenerdygirl



Category: Timeless (TV 2016)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Backstory, Denise is a Good Bunker Mom, Devouring Me Alive, Did I Mention There Was Angst?, F/M, Flogan Centric, Flynn and Wyatt are Idiots, Heavy Angst, I Just Woke Up and This Plot Bunny Was There, M/M, Multi, Pre-Canon, Very Close to Canon Though, Wyatt Logan's Bisexuality Crisis, feel free to yell at me, i had to write it
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-13
Updated: 2018-08-13
Packaged: 2019-06-26 17:18:46
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,449
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15667746
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/madsthenerdygirl/pseuds/madsthenerdygirl
Summary: What Wyatt doesn’t tell them—what he can’t tell them—is that this is not the first time he’s seen Garcia Flynn.





	could twist the sinews of thy heart?

**Author's Note:**

> The title is from The Tyger by William Blake

Walking into Mason Industries and learning that a) time travel exists and that b) the machine to do it in has been stolen by a terrorist is enough of a shock to make any man double-check that he hasn’t lost the last of his marbles and been chucked into the loony bin when he wasn’t looking.

Wyatt’s very familiar with the idea of losing his sanity. That’s what it’s felt like for the past six years, sliding slowly down and down and down as the guilt sinks further into his shoulders that it’s his fault, _it’s his fault_.

But that’s for later, when it’s just him and a six pack. Right now, he’s got work to do.

Even if that work is apparently getting into a floating tin can and trusting that it’ll take them where they need to go.

But then Agent Christopher shows them the video of the terrorist who’s taken the Mothership and Wyatt has a blinding, gravity-defying moment where he thinks that no, he’s not crazy, he’s just somehow died without knowing it and ended up in Hell.

Because that is the only possible explanation for what he’s seeing right now.

_Ex-NSA operative._

_Killed his wife and child._

What he tells them is, “I’ll get the job done.” “A one way ticket isn’t a problem.”

What Wyatt doesn’t tell them—what he can’t tell them—is that this is not the first time he’s seen Garcia Flynn.

 

* * *

 

The first time he sees Garcia Flynn, Wyatt is twenty-one years old, recently recruited into the 75th Rangers, and he hates himself when he looks in the mirror especially because he and Jess are as good as done, going by her last letter to him.

Flynn is a good few years older, confident, decidedly not Texan, and looks like sin.

He’s also going by the name Garcia Marković.

Marković, as Wyatt knows him, isn’t actually—technically—a part of the army. Not the US army, anyway. Part of their training is to cooperate with foreign units to ‘improve tactics, increase relationships, and exchanges with international special operations communities’, if you believe the pamphlet.

Wyatt doesn’t care. What he does care about is this guy is the walking, talking epitome of everything Wyatt has been trying not to think about since, oh, eleven years of age, and he decides he hates Marković on the spot.

Marković seems to take this as a challenge and needles Wyatt every chance he gets. It gets under Wyatt’s skin in a way that he knows it shouldn’t, makes his skin burn with embarrassment, his stomach spark in a dangerous way. He knows, he knows, he _knows_ that Marković is only playing with the fire he sees is there, the way people with curious natures tend to when they sense someone’s hiding something. He knows the smart thing to do would be to laugh it all off, play it cool, tease back so that Marković and everyone else can see Wyatt isn’t affected.

But he can’t.

He can’t because he can’t stop staring at Marković’s hands, the long dexterous fingers. He can’t stop watching that mouth and the way Marković seems to have this damn oral fixation and keeps licking his lips, tongue darting out when he’s thinking or unsure of his words. He can’t stop looking up at the guy, taking in the length of him.

It lights a fire in the deepest places, he’s staring into flames and he can’t look away.

God, he’s so screwed.

 

* * *

 

“I know you won’t shoot,” Flynn says, and Wyatt wants to drop the gun and rush him and take him to the ground and punch him until he breaks his knuckles on Flynn’s skull.

 _You don’t know me_ , the fire screams inside of his chest, but he doesn’t say that, because Lucy is in danger and Lucy has no idea what’s going on right now and he’ll be in so much damn trouble if it gets out that he knows Flynn and there’s Kate who looks like she could be Jessica’s sister and there’s a flaming wreck just to his left and he cannot, he cannot even begin to handle this.

Flynn gets away, and Wyatt watches a woman who looks like his dead wife bleed out under his hands, and the fire rages around them and he hates Garcia Flynn with every cursed fiber of his being.

 

* * *

 

Wyatt is caught staring because of course he is.

Jess is fond of telling him that subtlety isn’t his strong point. Along with a measured emotional reaction, maturity, and the ability to communicate like a functioning human being.

…their last fight was a doozy.

Technically you’re not supposed to sneak off base but ‘technically’ never stopped anyone, especially not a bunch of highly trained operatives who are literally learning how to sneak around without getting caught.

There’s a bar in the local town that all the guys hit up. There’s a silent pact that goes on there. You don’t tell who you saw there, and nobody will tell on you. Whatever happens in that bar stays in that bar, because if one of them goes down, then everyone’s getting their hides tanned.

Marković is the kind of guy who’s not exactly cheerful but is good at making friends. He’s witty, sarcastic, and can make fun of the brass like nobody’s business and so everyone likes him. He’s not the most popular guy, but somehow, he’s always in the thick of things.

Wyatt wishes he had that talent.

Not that Wyatt doesn’t get on well with the guys. He and Dave are rapidly becoming close, and he’s friendly with everyone else. He has no enemies. But he’s not charming by any means. He can pull that homegrown Texan boy shit with girls when he wants to but around men he always feels like he’s trying too hard, like one wrong move is going to earn him a fist.

No guesses where that attitude came from. Thanks, Dad.

But the point is, he’s not charming, or witty, or able to be everything to everybody, and so he’s sitting in a booth in the corner and nursing a beer and watching Marković play pool.

Wyatt watches Marković line up his shots, watches the odd looseness in his limbs, watches him grin in a way that’s stupidly goofy and endearing when he misses the corner pocket—

And he watches for too long. And Marković looks up and sees him.

Wyatt wants to literally curl up like a bug and die.

“I think that’s a sign,” Marković says, passing the pool cue to Dave. It’ll be another six months before Wyatt starts thinking of him as Bam Bam. “Let’s hope you’ve got better luck against Hertz than I do.”

The boys protest but Marković waves them off and strides over to sit with Wyatt.

Wyatt, who is currently trying to remember what breathing feels like.

He knows what Marković is going to ask, so he blurts out, “You were letting him win.”

Marković blinks at him in surprise for a moment, and then he smiles, and it is nothing like the vaguely-buzzed smiles he was giving before. This is sly and razor sharp.

“Good eye.” He settles himself more into the booth and Wyatt can feel his body heat and oh _God_ why doesn’t the floor swallow him up. “You think the others noticed?”

“They’re wasted,” Wyatt snorts. Then, before he loses his nerve, he asks, “Why are you letting Hertz win?”

Marković shrugs, a fluid motion he somehow manages to make with his entire body. Wyatt does not think about what that would feel like pressed against him, because he’s better than that.

Or not.

“It’s called making friends, Logan. You should try it.”

Wyatt snorts. Rangers, and the army in general, isn’t for making friends.

Marković smiles at him again, this time knowingly, like he somehow heard what Wyatt thought even though Wyatt is positive he didn’t say it out loud.

“Sometimes I wonder,” he muses, “what I’d have to do to get you to like me.”

 _Stop existing,_ Wyatt thinks. _Or stop being so fucking attractive. Take your pick._

“I like you,” he says instead.

Marković is the one snorting now. “You’ve got an interesting way of showing it.”

“Like you want me to like you anyway,” Wyatt replies.

Some of his anger, his confusion, his resentment must show through because Marković leans in and suddenly he is way too close and huh wow his eyes are greener than Wyatt thought, how about that, and his mouth is at Wyatt’s ear and it feels like Wyatt’s had gasoline poured on him and someone’s lighting a match.

“You really have no idea,” Marković assures him, and then he’s out of the booth and asking if he can get Wyatt anything while he’s up and Wyatt says—something, he doesn’t even know, and then he’s slipping out the back door while everyone’s backs are turned and he’s running and he doesn’t stop until he’s safely back on base.

It’s the first time he touches himself thinking about Marković but it’s definitely not the last.

 

* * *

 

It’s just him, and Flynn, and a countdown.

He doesn’t know if Flynn is going to actually shoot him. He doesn’t quite think that Flynn will, but then, he doesn’t have a right to think anything about Flynn anymore.

He wants to know how much of it was a lie. Were all the soft touches, the fond looks, the teasing nicknames lies? Was he just something amusing to pass the time while Flynn was undercover, getting information for whatever the hell group he was working for at the time? Or was it even worse than that—did Flynn realize that Wyatt Logan was the only one on base who didn’t like him, who might suspect what he was up to, and planned accordingly? Saw Wyatt’s weakness and exploited it so that Wyatt was too blinded by—by—

Too blind to see what Flynn was doing.

Whatever the answer is, the result is the same. One night Flynn was kissing him and telling him to “be good” on base while he was out doing some field exercise, and the next morning he’s vanished along with a good amount of extremely classified military information and the entire base is up in arms trying to locate the guy.

It’s a real jolt to learn your secret boyfriend is also a spy and a veteran of a hell of a lot more war and rebellion than he’d led you or your superior officers to believe.

Wyatt is, as a sort of side note in the back of his mind, also dying to know how Flynn went from being an enemy of Delta Force and the Pentagon to being an NSA operative-slash-asset but he figures it’s one of the many things he will never learn about Flynn.

Not that he cares to learn them.

But the fact is he didn’t know Flynn then and doesn’t know him now. Marković was a ploy, a lie, and quite possibly so was everything that Flynn told him. The man in front of him is dangerous, violent, angry, and he could very well shoot Wyatt if Lucy and Rufus don’t get back in time.

Flynn sends Karl and the other goons away, and it’s just the two of them. He looms over Wyatt like this and Wyatt hates how it makes sparks shoot up his spine, how aware he is of the fact that he’s got his legs splayed and his hands behind his back. Being this close to Flynn is dangerous, not just for the lives of the people in the near vicinity but also for Wyatt’s sanity.

More than ten years later and his body still burns. He closes his eyes, and he can still feel Flynn’s hands sliding up his thighs.

Wyatt hates him so, so much.

“You really think this psych routine’s gonna work?”

“Not a routine, Wyatt,” Flynn says, and Wyatt wants to punch him for using his first name because they are _not_ on that sort of basis, not anymore.

“You shot me,” Wyatt points out. “Before you went and killed Lincoln. Remember that?”

“I wounded you,” Flynn replies. “And I knew you’d recover.”

“19th Century germs, Flynn, it was disgusting.”

“Oh, please, I shot you the same place Hertz got shot, it was clean, I knew you’d be fine.”

“And that’s supposed to make me okay with the fact that _you fucking shot me_.”

But he plays along. Just to see what kind of lie Flynn’s got cooked up this time. He’s sure it’s a good one. The guy played at being in love with Wyatt for almost a year—missed his true calling as an actor, if you ask Wyatt.

“Two years ago,” Flynn says, and he sounds so… so tired, but in a way that takes Wyatt by the throat because it’s the kind of tired that you’re holding back and hiding and Wyatt _knows_ that tone, knows it because that’s how Garcia would sound when he was exhausted from a long day and didn’t want the other guys to know and Wyatt would make some excuse about being worn out so that Garcia could offer to help him back to base and could keep being the stand up guy, the popular guy—

Flynn spins his tale about Rittenhouse, about time travel and Connor Mason, and then… then…

“Four nights later, I’m home asleep when my wife gets up in the middle of the night.” He pauses. “Her—her name was Lorena.”

Wyatt gives him his best _like I care_ look.

“You would’ve liked her,” Flynn adds, absently. “She would’ve liked you.”

Wyatt wants to ask if Flynn even waited a week after he left base before sliding into bed with her, or if he was secretly dating her while fucking Wyatt the whole time.

But he says nothing.

“I met her, ah, about nine months after…” Flynn lets his voice trail off but Wyatt knows what the end of the sentence was.

He’s not sure why Flynn feels like he has to excuse himself to Wyatt, and he really doesn’t care. Or he tells himself that he doesn’t, anyway.

“We got married in 2006,” Flynn adds. “Iris was born the next year. My daughter.”

Something… something inside of Wyatt, something not quite like a gut punch but close enough, twists his stomach and he has to force himself to keep staring straight ahead and not do something stupid like cry or scream or try to rip out of his bonds by sheer force of will so that he can get his hands around Flynn’s throat and squeeze.

It's not that he’s angry that Flynn had a kid. She was probably a good kid. Wyatt just—he just—he can’t, hear this. He can’t hear this, can’t humanize Flynn again.

He’s terrified of where that road leads.

“So Lorena gets up to go check on Iris. She was—she was almost seven. Lorena thought she heard her coughing.” Flynn pauses. “They call them silencers, but they’re not that silent. Not at night. Not when it’s two shots murdering your family.”

Wyatt thinks the bottom dropped out of his stomach. He somehow can’t picture the Garcia he knows, tall and strong and confident, unable to save someone. Garcia was invincible to him.

“You didn’t fight back.”

“There were too many of them.” Flynn sounds angry and exhausted in a way that Wyatt had never heard out of him when he was Marković. “It was dark. The bullets were flying. I barely made it out alive, and then Rittenhouse framed me for all of it, and I found myself on the run. But it was all Rittenhouse.” Rage, dark and hissing and popping like flames, enters Flynn’s voice. “All because I asked a single question. And that’s who they are.”

Wyatt swallows. He can’t believe this. This is just another one of Flynn’s lies. He’s a good liar. Wyatt can’t forget that.

“If any of this were true, you have a time machine. Why don’t you just go back and save your family?”

Flynn looks at him, eyes dark and deep and far too knowing. “Like you want to save your wife?”

Something hot and choking rises up in Wyatt’s throat. “You don’t get to talk about her.”

“And you do?” Flynn’s angry at him now, Wyatt can tell. “How the hell did you two even end up back together, Wyatt. She made it pretty clear in her letter—”

“Don’t you _ever_ talk about her—” He showed Flynn that letter in confidence, he showed it to someone he thought he could _trust_ , he—

“I know what happened,” Flynn growled. “From Lucy’s journal, Wyatt, you were at the Pelican Lounge in San Diego and she ran into an old boyfriend at the bar, you got jealous, you drank too much—”

“You shut the hell up.”

“And as you were driving home she got out of the car when you two were arguing, and you drove off—”

“I said shut the _fuck_ up Flynn or so help me _God_ —”

“It took you, what, only twenty minutes until you cooled down, came back for her, but by then she was gone.” Flynn sounds almost like he’s disappointed in him.

Wyatt feels like his blood itself is on fire and all he wants to do is burn the both of them down with it.

“Lucy writes that you’re obsessed with bringing her back and that you need to move on—”

“The last time I tried to move on, I got stabbed in the back!” Wyatt shouts, and that’s when he knows he’s said too much.

Flynn stares at him like Wyatt’s slapped him, and then his face goes tight with anger. “If that’s what you remember, then you don’t remember anything at all.”

 

* * *

 

Wyatt wants to yell at him exactly what he remembers.

He remembers swapping a beer back and forth and comparing stories about their moms, hearing about how Maria was a genius, soft but always sad. He remembers telling him about Laura, about how she died when Wyatt was five and nothing was the same since.

He remembers the first time Marković kisses him, up against the back outside wall of the bar where all the guys went to smoke only there’s no one else there, and Wyatt burns and burns and burns inside and hates himself and never, ever wants to stop.

He remembers getting spitting mad one time over an order and wishing like hell he could disobey it and he and Bam Bam got royally drunk later and stole guns from the armory and took pot shots and Marković found them and dragged his ass back to the bunkers before he could get in trouble and how after that Marković always called him _moja tigriću_ and Wyatt didn’t even mind because it was said in one of those soft moments when he could feel Marković smiling against his neck as he kissed him.

He definitely remembers when they finally got past kissing and grinding with their clothes on, when Marković unbuttoned Wyatt’s pants and Wyatt thought he was going to spontaneously combust and Marković stroked them both and Wyatt thought in a burst of delirium that something couldn’t be a sin if it felt like this.

Wyatt remembers saying his name in a broken whisper, and Marković telling him, “No, say my name, my first name,” and Wyatt does, he whispers, “Garcia, Garcia, Garcia” until it’s the only thing he knows, until his hips are snapping forward and he’s coming hard and biting down on Marković’s shoulder to muffle the noises.

That’s what he calls him after that, in private, always Garcia, because it makes Marković’s face go all soft and fond.

Of course, it’s not until much later, when everyone’s running around trying to find the bastard, that Wyatt realizes it was because the _Garcia_ was real, even if the _Marković_ wasn’t.

 

* * *

 

“You have no right to bring up Jess,” Wyatt says, and he knows he’s spitting mad, literally, and that he’s probably playing right into Flynn’s hands but he doesn’t care, he doesn’t fucking care. “And you definitely don’t get to tell me what I can and can’t do in my relationships, you aren’t my damn therapist.”

“Yeah, well, if you two couldn’t end your codependency, maybe you should get one.” It’s a shade of the classic Garcia snark that Wyatt had at first hated and then grown to be fond of, and Wyatt would give pretty much everything he has to be able to kick Flynn in the balls, just once.

“Look who’s talking,” he shoots back. “Were you always a raging sociopath or did you just develop that after you screwed me over?”

“What the hell did you want me to do?” Flynn demands. It occurs to Wyatt that his henchmen could be waiting by the door right now, eavesdropping on all of this and laughing themselves sick over the fact that their boss apparently once had a fling with the guy he’s now using as collateral. “Tell you what I was up to? Wyatt they would have court marshalled you _at best_. God knows what else they would have done, this was 2004, America wasn’t exactly following the innocent until proven guilty protocol with anyone they considered a possible terrorist!”

“So I’m supposed to believe that it was some, what, romantic attempt to keep me safe?”

“I wouldn’t go so far as to call it romantic but _yes_ , you idiot, the less you knew the safer you were!”

“You _lied_ to me, you lied about literally everything, how do you expect me to trust you about anything you say now? Did you even have a wife and kid? Or did you just make up the wife bit because of Jess and threw in a kid because hey, why not make it even sappier!”

“First of all, I didn’t lie about—about everything, and second of all—” Oh, Flynn’s angry now, truly angry, and Wyatt’s terrified and furious and oddly aroused all at the same time and _wow_ he hates Flynn so much. “Don’t you ever—talk about my family like that again. They existed, they were loved, and they didn’t deserve what I did to them.”

They stand there for a moment, or rather Wyatt sits with his hands tied behind his back and Flynn stands there, the both of them breathing heavily and glaring daggers.

Wyatt knows it’s probably a sign of weakness, or at least curiosity, but he breaks first.

“So, what, this is your big plan? Just go shooting down whoever you think might be Rittenhouse?”

“I can’t go back to my own time, and I don’t know who put the hit out on my family to begin with, so I’m gonna just wipe Rittenhouse from the map. And once I do?” Flynn shrugs. “Who knows? Maybe one day I’ll come back and my girls will be there again.”

Wyatt snorts and rolls his eyes. Yeah. Good luck with that.

Flynn folds his arms, resting back, half sitting. “We could even find a way to bring back Jess,” he adds quietly, a possible olive branch.

Wyatt doesn’t look at him—doesn’t let himself look.

“We can save the people we love,” Flynn says, softly. Too softly, almost the way he used to talk to Wyatt when it was just the two of them, in those minutes and hours they could snatch when no one could see them.

“Let’s say I believe you,” Wyatt says, and he’s still not looking at Flynn. “And Rittenhouse really is that dangerous. There’s got to be a way to take them out without destroying America.”

Flynn laughs through clenched teeth.

“I mean, c’mon, Flynn, what you’re doing—it’s kind of scorched earth, isn’t it?”

“No.” Flynn shakes his head. “Rittenhouse and America are so intertwined, sometimes it’s hard to tell one from the other. They’re a cancer. There’s no other choice. To save the body, you have to attack the body.”

Wyatt hates that he almost understands what Flynn means. “Guess you really did turn into a sociopath.”

 

* * *

 

Later on, Wyatt will want to smack himself for not realizing that the Maria that Flynn has been hanging out with is _Maria Flynn_.

Well, she’s not a Flynn yet. She’s a Thompkins right now and has Gabriel first, and doesn’t care to have the father involved, and then Gabriel dies and she packs up and gets a job somewhere, anywhere, to get as far away as possible from the memory, and she meets Asher Flynn, and they get married, and she has Garcia, and then Asher starts hitting the booze and hitting her and it’s all downhill from there.

But right now she’s whip smart, she’s got her boy that she loves, and now—now she gets to keep him.

Garcia told him about Gabriel. About the loss. About how the sadness never left his mother’s eyes. Asher definitely didn’t help but Wyatt knows that for a long time, Garcia thought that it was because he wasn’t enough. That he should do something, be something more, to get Maria to smile.

And now he has. He’s done enough, been enough, and he’s saved his brother.

He won’t even know Gabriel. Like Lucy doesn’t know a timeline without Amy, Garcia won’t know a timeline with Gabriel. He didn’t do this for himself. He did it for his mother.

Wyatt’s heart grows hot and squeezes tight and he hates, oh how he hates that he can’t blame Flynn for this at all.

 

* * *

 

Lucy can’t trust Flynn.

She can’t, she can’t, she _can’t_.

Lucy doesn’t understand, of course, and Wyatt can’t tell her because then he’ll have to tell her everything and he’s already on thin fucking ice with both her and Jess as it is but if she lets Flynn in—if she trusts him—he’ll turn his back on her and he’ll abandon her just like he abandoned Wyatt and he won’t let that happen, not to Lucy, not when he’s just walked away from her.

 _I don’t have a choice_ , he wants to yell at her. Jess forgave him everything, she put up with him through it all, she’s the only thing he has left from his past. He can’t lose her.

But he can’t lose Lucy to Flynn, either. Not when he knows how it’s going to end.

So he just cocks it up royally instead.

 

* * *

 

They’re making out in Garcia’s bed, which is just a little more private than Wyatt’s, hips rolling into each other. Wyatt’s got his hands digging into the muscles on Garcia’s back and one leg wrapped around his waist and he’s so turned on he thinks he might die.

“Get in me,” Wyatt pants, and Garcia goes still.

Wyatt whines, pushing his hips back into him, because why the _fuck_ is he stopping?

“Wyatt,” Garcia whispers, and his hand catches the side of Wyatt’s face, turning it so that their mouths are brushing together. “Are you sure?”

“I know you’re clean,” Wyatt says, because he hasn’t seen the papers but he knows Garcia and he knows the guy wouldn’t even have stuck his hand down Wyatt’s pants if he thought it would get Wyatt sick.

Garcia swears in Croatian under his breath and kisses Wyatt hard. “Are you sure?” he asks again.

“I want it.” Wyatt feels like he’s vibrating. “I want you to fuck me.” _I want you to own me, I want you to get so inside of me that you push out all the shame and all the shit and everything, I want to stop feeling ashamed of this, I want to be yours and I want you to make me new._

Not that he says any of that.

Garcia kisses him, and keeps kissing him, and doesn’t stop even as he’s yanking off their clothes, spreading Wyatt’s legs, and it’s clearly meant to distract him because the thing nobody mentions about taking it up the ass? It feels _weird_ at first. Not even fun or painful just. Fuckin’ weird.

But after the whole !?!?!? from his body and the general odd feeling, it starts to get good. Still weird but good weird, and Garcia’s thorough, taking his time, changing the angle slightly until he hits something and Wyatt feels like someone hooked him up with jumper cables.

He bites down hard on Garcia’s lip, drawing blood, and Garcia chuckles into his mouth and goes, “say hello to the prostate.”

“I fucking hate you,” Wyatt hisses, trying to keep his voice down, and ohhhhh fuck. Suddenly he can’t get enough and he wants more, wants to be filled and fucked.

Garcia’s annoyingly patient and persistent, and he ignores Wyatt’s muffled pleas until Wyatt’s biting down hard on Garcia’s shoulder to try and silence the whines in the back of his throat—sounds he didn’t even know he _could_ make.

“Are you sure?” Garcia asks one last time, when he pulls his fingers out.

A part of him is fucking terrified because he’s seen Garcia’s dick and it’s not exactly on the small end of the scale here. But he wants it so much, so badly, it’s like it always is with Garcia—fire in his lungs, under his skin, roaring in his ears, and he wants to burn.

“Yes,” he whispers.

He has to keep his face buried in Garcia’s shoulder because he cannot, for the life of him, keep quiet as he’s fucked. Garcia’s thrusts are hard, deep, but methodical. He’s not going as fast as he could, trying to keep some kind of rhythm, and clearly also trying not to make too much noise.

Wyatt wonders what it would be like, fast and rough, if they were someplace where Garcia could just let go and do whatever the hell he wanted to him. It makes the fire in him roar and he has to bite down hard to keep from shouting as he’s pushed over the edge.

He’s never felt more used or claimed in his life and he wants it, he craves it, he needs it. When Garcia comes and he can feel it sliding out of him, he feels dirty and wrong and he wants to laugh and spit in his father’s face and in the face of everyone else in his hometown and scream and cry and laugh all at once.

He wants to do it again and again until this feels right. Until all the guilt is pushed out of him and is replaced by something else, something that feels and smells and warms him like Garcia.

 

* * *

 

Wyatt’s future self is pissed as hell at him.

Logan, as they’re calling him for convenience’s sake (Future Lucy is going by Preston), basically ignores Wyatt the entire time they’re here. Preston seems brusque but is happy to explain some things to Jiya and Lucy, she’s polite enough to everyone, including Wyatt, although she’s carefully keeping her distance from both him and Flynn. Flynn looks at her like he’s starving, and Wyatt can’t—for once—blame him. If this is the Lucy who gave Flynn that journal, then, well, if their positions were reversed, Wyatt would stare at her too.

But Logan? He’s nice enough to everybody, _including_ Flynn, and fucking ignores Wyatt like he’s not even there.

It’s a real pisser.

Wyatt wants to shove the guy against the wall and demand what happened in his timeline. Did he and Flynn not meet before? Did Logan screw up in his own timeline so much that he hates his past self? What did Wyatt do—what _will_ he do—that makes his double pretend he doesn’t exist?

But he doesn’t think an interrogation is going to get him any answers, so he keeps his mouth shut and does what he’s told.

He’s a soldier, or he was. He used to be good at following orders. He can do that again.

So he doesn’t talk to Flynn unless he has to, tries to respond to Preston with the same detached, careful politeness she’s giving him (and what the hell is going on there, he’d like to ask her as well), doesn’t speak to Lucy unless he has to either (because the shocked expression when he told her he loved her is not exactly encouraging), and basically just keeps his mouth shut and pretends he doesn’t exist until someone tells him what to do.

It’s a miserable couple of weeks, but by the end of it, they have Rufus back.

And that’s what matters, Wyatt tells himself as Jiya nearly throttles Rufus because she’s hugging him so tightly and Mason actually bursts into tears on the spot (surprising everyone, including himself). Rufus is back.

That’s what matters.

 

* * *

 

“Hey, hey, shh, _moja tigriću_ , it’s me.”

“Where are you going? It’s… it’s too early.”

“I’ve got that early morning exercise, remember? But hey, keep sleeping in and you won’t even miss me.”

“Har, har, har.”

Kisses. He remembers Garcia kissing him over and over again, almost between every word, like he couldn’t stop himself. “Be good while I’m gone.”

“I’m always good. You’re the troublemaker.”

“Keep telling yourself that.”

More kisses. He doesn’t understand that. Why Garcia is acting like something’s crumbling beneath them. But he’s hazy with sleep so he brushes it off.

“Wyatt?”

“Mmm?”

“Already asleep again, I feel special.”

“Shut up.”

“Wyatt.”

“Yes?”

“…be good.”

Garcia’s slipping away, and he’s gone.

 

* * *

 

Jess doesn’t want to listen, at first, but Wyatt keeps reaching out and he keeps trying and he almost gets shot a few times for his troubles, but finally… she reaches back.

“Let me make one thing clear,” she says. She’s managed to get him alone in the hospital tent of a battlefield in WWI. “I’m doing this because it’s the right thing to do, and because no way am I letting Emma get her hands on our baby, and because I like you guys. But us? Wyatt? Over. Done. Finished.”

He can’t say he didn’t expect that, but it still feels like someone’s rammed a hot poker into his stomach. “Did you love me at all? When you came back?”

Jess’s eyes are warm and sad. “I tried to,” she admits. “I really did. You were—you were trying so hard, but—I just. I couldn’t. And then there was you and Lucy and Flynn…”

“Whoa, whoa, whoa. There is no Flynn in this equation.”

Jess looks at him for a moment as if to say _this kind of idiocy is why I’m divorcing you_. “I love you. But I’m not in love with you. And I’m just sorry that I let you down.”

“You didn’t let me down. I’m the one who failed you. Over and over.” He holds out his hand. “But. Um. Here’s to awkwardly co-parenting?”

Jess shakes his hand. “I want a proper burner phone, and Denise better extract me before I go into labor or I’m murdering you all.”

Wyatt’s put in charge of communicating with Jess because while nobody necessarily trusts him to be objective where she’s concerned, he’s the only one she’ll talk to.

And, honestly, the only one she can talk to right now. Rufus and Jiya are pissed at her still, and Wyatt’s not letting Flynn or Lucy anywhere near her, not when Jess knows far too much for his own good. In any timeline, Jess is a meddler.

What this all means is that sometimes their exchanges of information turn into personal talks. And Wyatt… well.

He’s lonely, and Jess was his only confidant, his only safe place, for the majority of his thirty-odd miserable years on this earth.

So he tells her.

And Jess says,

“For Christ’s sake, Wyatt, just apologize and forgive him.”

“ _What_.” He can’t actually believe that she said that. “Sorry, must be a bad connection, I thought you said to forgive him.”

“That’s exactly what I said.”

“Are you fucking kidding me? Jess, he lied to me about everything, he turned into a fucking terrorist, he shot however many people—”

“Don’t make this about the whole time travel thing because it isn’t, you could’ve run into him at a coffee shop and you’d be this pissed.”

“And I’d have every right to be!”

“Yes, Wyatt!” Jess snaps. “Yes, he screwed you over! He made a mistake! You were both in love and it was bad timing and your backs were to the wall and he had a dozen shitty options in front of him so he chose the one that wouldn’t end with you having to shoot him or be court marshalled or worse. He did what he had to so that he could protect you. And was it fun? No. And was it a mistake? Maybe. But out of all the things he could have done, it sounds to me like he did what was best—what kept you out of trouble, kept you alive, kept you from having to do something awful.”

Wyatt opens his mouth. Closes it. At last he says—unable to think of anything else— “…you’re not mad about… about the affair?”

“Christ, Wyatt, the affair didn’t even happen in my timeline,” Jess replies, sounding exhausted. “Honestly? I’d prefer your timeline. You and I were going through a rough patch, we were practically broken up, and you fell in love with someone else and probably would’ve kept seeing them if things hadn’t—if it hadn’t all been shit. That’s way better than my timeline, all the random one night stands you were hooking up with.”

Wyatt can’t help but latch onto the one part of what she says—even though the mention of his alternate timeline self, the one Jess knows, always hurts him, always feels like she blames him even though she’s told him time and again that she knows they’re two different men—he hears _probably would’ve kept seeing them_ and his brain halts.

Would he have kept seeing Flynn? Would he have…

They couldn’t have been public. Not in the military, not in those years, certainly. But—but could they have waited? Would Flynn have made Wyatt want to get out in a way that Jess hadn’t? Would Wyatt have had the courage to stand up and say yes, this is a man, and I’m in love with him?

He doesn’t know.

He doesn’t even know if he has the courage now.

 

* * *

 

He doesn’t hate Flynn.

He’s never hated Flynn, no matter how hard he tried. He was angry, so angry, because he was hurt and vulnerable and ashamed and terrified and lost. He’s reviled him, spat at him, fought him, wanted to kick his teeth in, wanted to scream at him until he lost his voice—

But he doesn’t hate him.

And it’s even harder now, when Flynn is being so _good_. When Flynn is being soft and gentle. When Flynn is looking after Lucy, reminding her to eat, carrying her to bed, encouraging her, protecting her. When Flynn is being everything that Wyatt had always wanted him to be and knew he could be, when he’s seeing in real time the things that Wyatt could only daydream about in snatched moments. Those fleeting seconds of softness are being given tenfold to Lucy, she’s getting hours and days and weeks of them, and Wyatt wants to fucking choke.

Except he can’t, because it’s Lucy, and if anyone in this world deserves encouragement and protection and softness, it’s her.

Way to go, Logan. Envious of Lucy for getting Flynn. Envious of Flynn for getting Lucy.

It aches like someone put an arrow in his chest and he can’t pull it out or he’ll bleed to death, but he doesn’t know how long he can keep going on with it stuck in either. Sometimes he wakes up in the middle of the night and he feels like he’s forgotten how to breathe.

They both avoid him. It took him a while to notice that Flynn’s (justified) anger had cooled into a careful policy of Don’t Ask Don’t Tell where Wyatt’s existence is concerned, but he saw Lucy’s avoidance right away.

It’s a gut punch and an answer to his unasked question. Maybe she did love him once, maybe she could have, but that door’s shut now.

He wants to scream and scream and _scream_ until the love bleeds out of him, until he doesn’t care about either of them anymore, until he’s empty and hollow and can refill himself better, somehow, better and without a thought for them, although God knows the two are not exclusive. Most of the time he thinks he’d be better with them, even though that ship has clearly sailed.

Still.

He can’t keep this in his chest anymore. It’s throttling him and one day he will wake up and will not remember how to breathe at all. He can’t keep looking at them, at their silent conversations and soft touches and breathless looks, or he’s going to fucking collapse.

He has to talk to someone.

 

* * *

 

Wyatt goes to Denise, because Jess is kind of off-limits except for when she’s playing double agent and even then God knows if the line is as secure as they think it is, and Rufus just got back from the dead and has dealt with enough of Wyatt’s stupid relationship decisions, and Jiya’s just got Rufus back and isn’t in a mood to talk to anyone, and Mason is busy not letting Rufus out of his sight, and that only leaves, well, one person.

Denise is actually… really good about it. Wyatt often forgets that being a mom means that, well, Denise is used to being a mom. She makes them tea, and she gets out her knitting so her hands have something to do, and she sits while Wyatt tells her everything.

He figures it’s probably a little different from, say, one of her teenagers telling her they got dumped or cheated on a test or something. But Denise doesn’t say a word, just knit one purl two until Wyatt’s out of words.

Then she sets down her knitting. “Come here.”

Wyatt doesn’t know what he’s expecting, but a hug certainly wasn’t at the top of the list.

He didn’t cry the entire time talking, but now that he’s got Denise holding him, something breaks inside of him and suddenly he’s hiccupping because he’s crying so hard.

“That’s what I thought,” Denise says, and she rubs his back and lets him get snot all over her sweater. “Step number one, holding emotions in is for idiots. Cry in the shower once in a while, Wyatt, for fuck’s sake.”

Wyatt feels like he’s five years old again and has scraped his knee and on the one hand he knows it’s not a big deal but on the other hand Mom it _hurts_ and so he lets himself be held as long as Denise will let him get away with it.

When the embarrassment at last kicks in and he pulls away, Denise gestures for him to sit back down and sip his tea.

It’s actually not bad tea, although he’ll always prefer coffee.

Denise produces tissues that she’d squirreled away somewhere and silently passes them over.

Wyatt blows his nose and wipes his face and feels like a thorough idiot, although he’s not sure why.

“Before we get into anything else,” Denise says, “Wyatt. I want you to tell me what you want.”

Wyatt looks up at her. Stares, really. “What?”

“I want you to tell me, without dancing around it or adding qualifiers or giving me excuses, what you want. What you really want.”

It’s such a simple thing, but Wyatt can feel his throat closing up. “I…”

“It’s important that you say it,” Denise tells him. Her voice is gentle but firm in that special way it seems only Denise can manage. “You need to say what you want, because you deserve to say what you want. You’re allowed to ask. You’re _supposed_ to ask. Life isn’t about only being able to have the things you can take. Life is about learning how to ask for the things you want given to you.”

She’s not outright saying _you were a jerk_ but that’s the message hidden in there and Wyatt’s stupid but he’s not stupid enough to miss this lesson.

But to ask, you have to think that you’re worthy of receiving.

Wyatt doesn’t know if he is, anymore, or if he ever was.

“Go on,” Denise says. She’s gentle about it but there’s no arguing against her, either. “Say what you want. You’re allowed to want things. We take because we think we aren’t going to be given them because we think, deep down, that we’re not supposed to have those things. And sometimes we’re right and we’re not supposed to. But a lot of the time, we are, and we would get all that we wanted if we started approaching it with an open hand instead of a closed fist.”

Wyatt takes a deep breath. Then another. He thinks he might be drowning.

“I want…” Another breath. “I want Lucy. And Flynn. I want—I want to be with. With them, I—I. I love…” Keep breathing, somehow. “I love them and I want to be with them. I want them to forgive me and I want them to love me.”

Denise doesn’t interrupt him. Someone else might have. Someone else might have understood what he was trying to say and had him stop after the first stumbling sentence. But Denise waits and makes him get all of it out.

Then she nods.

“Now we can get somewhere,” she says, and Wyatt feels something inside of him loosen.

 

* * *

 

Denise Christopher is a capable woman, a trained commander, a natural leader, and an experienced mother, but she’s certainly not a therapist. Wyatt’s aware, thanks, that he probably needs to check himself in somewhere.

But it helps.

And she makes it clear what he has to do next.

So he asks Lucy if they can talk privately.

Lucy’s wary. He can see that much. But she sits down anyway and doesn’t say anything.

“Okay.” Wyatt tells himself that he can do this. Even if it feels very much like he’s going to throw up. “First of all, I’m sorry. I was—I was shit to you and I am so sorry about that. I treated you like I owned you and it’s exactly what I did to Jess—” as she had been happy to inform him multiple times, “—and I really, whatever you think I need to do to make it up to you, I’ll do it.”

Lucy tips her head to the side, like she’s considering, then gives him a _go on_ motion with her hand.

And Wyatt tells her about Flynn. About Garcia.

Lucy’s silent, like Denise was, but Wyatt can see that she’s gearing up to say something.

When he finishes, Lucy looks at him for a long moment, and then says, kindly but factually,

“I know.”

Wyatt stares at her. “You—you what?”

“I know,” Lucy says simply.

“…you know.”

“Flynn told me, a few weeks after we started sleeping together.”

Right. Great. So. Flynn once again has the courage that Wyatt still seems to struggle to find.

Lucy seems to sense his distress, because she reaches out and places her hand over Wyatt’s. “I’m glad that you told me,” she says, and she gives him a smile that Wyatt tries to pretend isn’t pitying. “I wanted to hear it from you, too.”

“I still shouldn’t have treated you like that.”

“No, you shouldn’t have, and the first way you can make it up to me is by listening to what I say and then _doing_ what I say. Is that clear?”

“Yes… ma’am.”

Lucy smiles, squeezes his hand. “I tell you to give me space, you give me space. I tell you to listen, you listen. Got it?”

“Got it.”

Lucy pulls her hand away. “So. Garcia.”

“…yes.”

She tilts her head again. “Are you going to talk to him?”

“…I’ve been told that I should?”

Lucy looks at him in silence for a long moment. When she does speak, her voice is soft, and aching, and Wyatt wants to hold her tightly and never let her go. “He loves you, Wyatt. He wanted me to know that—that he loves me but he never stopped. I mean, I think he did, a little, because, you know, Lorena and Iris and knowing he’d never see you again but he loved you then and he loves you now.

“I don’t know if he would want me to tell you this. But I think you need to hear it. Because… because you have to trust that people love you. That you’re—that you’re worthy of being loved. I didn’t need you to come to my defense or fight off Flynn or anything to prove that you had earned my love. I just needed you to be you, the best of you.” She smiles, and it’s painful and beautiful all at once. “I needed the man who tucked me in and kissed me goodnight.”

Wyatt swears that shards of glass are in his lungs. “You—you weren’t supposed to know about that.”

“I wasn’t asleep. Or as asleep as you thought, anyway. That’s when you’re at your best, Wyatt. When you’re like that. Soft. That’s the man I fell in love with. Not the soldier. And that’s who Garcia fell in love with, too.”

Lucy stands. “If he can love you through all of that, then maybe you should consider the idea that you don’t have to be jealous, because nobody’s going to come along and be better than you. You’re good enough just as you are to convince someone to stay. And he will stay. If you ask him.”

“And you?”

Wyatt’s torn between despair and hope and it feels like he’s being slowly stretched apart by ropes around his soul.

Lucy smiles once again, and he can’t be sure but he thinks she might have tears in her eyes. She walks over, takes his face in her hands, and kisses him on the forehead. “Talk to Garcia.”

It’s not a direct answer and yet, it’s answer enough.

 

* * *

 

Flynn’s folding laundry, of all things, when Wyatt steps into the bedroom that Flynn shares with Lucy. Flynn looks up, sees Wyatt standing there, and basically freezes like a host in _Westworld_. Motor functions are down.

“You, uh…” Fuck, Wyatt really doesn’t know how to do this. “You got a minute?”

Flynn glances at the open bedroom door, and Wyatt closes it.

“I suppose,” Flynn answers. He folds his arms. “That depends on what this minute is about.”

Wyatt stares at him. There’s so little of Marković in him, and yet, underneath Marković was Garcia. And Wyatt can see the Garcia he knew still in there.

Maybe that man was in front of him this whole time and he just didn’t want to look.

“I loved you,” he blurts out, and shit, that is not how he was supposed to start this, but the words are just tumbling out. Maybe his filter’s broken after so much apologizing and truth telling the last few days. “I was a dick to you later and I was harsh and you tried to give me an olive branch and you were kind of shitty about it but you were right, and I should’ve listened, but I didn’t because I was so goddamn in love with you and you just _left_ and I couldn’t—”

Flynn has to cross the room. He has to, the laws of physics were still around last time Wyatt checked even though the laws of time are apparently more like guidelines, but somehow it’s like he blinks and Flynn’s there and pulling him in and holding him and Wyatt just fucking breaks, holding on and burying his face in Flynn’s chest and shaking, shaking, shaking.

“I wanted to hate you,” Wyatt whispers, and his voice doesn’t even sound like himself. “I wanted to hate you so badly and I couldn’t because the second I saw you it was like I couldn’t—I can’t—I can’t stop loving you and I tried, I tried so hard—”

Flynn’s crushing Wyatt to him like it’s all he’s wanted to do for days, weeks, months, and Wyatt can’t seem to unclench his fingers from where they’re gripping handfuls of Flynn’s stupid turtleneck.

“You always were _moja tigriću_ ,” Flynn murmurs, and Wyatt’s heart breaks and mends all in an instant when he hears the pet name. “I should’ve known you’d snarl and scratch a little.”

“More than a little,” Wyatt admits.

Flynn kisses the top of his head, his temple, his jaw, and Wyatt can feel those sparks inside of him and thinks that finally, finally, it might be okay to let the fire consume him.

Out of all the things that are different and all the things that have changed, this has not: when Garcia kisses him, Wyatt burns.

 

* * *

 

Lucy finds out pretty quickly.

By ‘pretty quickly’, Wyatt means she walks in about fifteen minutes later when Garcia has Wyatt pinned to the wall and Wyatt’s riding Garcia’s thigh. And it’s a hell of a lot better than he remembered because in the army they couldn’t leave hickeys, and he’s quickly learning that Garcia’s got a thing for sucking bruises into Wyatt’s neck.

“That went better than I expected,” Lucy says, as Wyatt contemplates inducing a heart attack and dying.

Garcia, the bastard, isn’t fazed at all. He shrugs and says, “He didn’t try to hit me this time.”

Which, well, Wyatt deserves that.

And probably every other bit of shade they throw at him.

Lucy eyes Wyatt up and down for a moment and he has the sudden insane urge to get onto his knees in front of her and possibly start asking for mercy. Because he knows where Garcia stands, unequivocally, but he’s not so sure about Lucy. And, to be fair, he and Garcia are almost even in the ways they’ve hurt each other.

But Lucy didn’t do anything wrong, and Lucy drew the short straw.

If only Garcia wants him, then Wyatt will make do, but he loves Lucy, loves her like he loves fresh air, and he’ll spend the rest of his life apologizing and doing whatever she wants if it means she’ll even _consider_ …

Lucy crosses over to him, places her hands on his chest, and kisses him as soft as a dream.

“You’re still on probation,” she tells him, but she’s whispering it while her face is an inch from his and there’s a smile lurking in her voice and Wyatt—

Wyatt starts to believe that they won’t leave.

 

* * *

 

Wyatt first saw Flynn on a video recording as he stole a time machine in 2017.

He first saw Marković in early 2004 in the desert, wearing fatigues and a smile that Wyatt now knows is the one designed to put people at ease, off their guard.

But one name stayed true, and so did the person using it, and it’s the name that Wyatt whispers when his boyfriend moves inside him, when he’s saying good morning, when he’s teasing him about liking the _Mission: Impossible_ movies.

“Garcia.” Their sleeping arrangement is what could best be described as ‘haphazard’, and Wyatt’s in the middle tonight with Lucy snuggled into his side. His arm is pinned underneath her and asleep, but he woke up feeling cold on one side and turned to see that Garcia is sitting up, staring into nothing.

“Garcia.”

He turns, focuses back in on Wyatt. “Hey.”

Wyatt knows, after months and months, what kind of ghosts keep Garcia up at night. Wyatt has his own ghosts, as does Lucy. “C’mere.”

Garcia does so, climbing back into bed and brushing his mouth over Wyatt’s. “I’m here,” Wyatt says, because he doesn’t know what else to say in times like these, but it seems to be enough.

“Mmm, going to chase the bad memories away?” Garcia asks, but he’s sliding in and draping an arm over Wyatt’s waist, propped up on his other elbow to look down at him.

“If I can,” Wyatt answers honestly. He’s less cocksure now, less desperate to appear in control. He knows that Lucy and Garcia don’t mind if he’s scared, or unsure, or vulnerable.

“You do, _moja tigriću_ , you do.”

Flynn curls around him, his arm long enough to drape over both Wyatt and Lucy, and Wyatt watches him until his eyes close.

His warmth is what lulls Wyatt into sleep.

**Author's Note:**

> moja tigriću = my tiger


End file.
